


i'm glad you didn't know

by ThaliaClio



Series: cracked mirrors [1]
Category: Constantine (TV), Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, But you don't have to read it to get it, Child Abuse, Choppy storytelling, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Hurt/Comfort, Mick and John are twins because Matt Ryan's face, Orphans, Pre-Series, Pre-quel to 'sorry i didn't mention', Tattoos, They had shitty lives, Time Skips, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 15:45:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2698412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaClio/pseuds/ThaliaClio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick and John are twins. Life goes in two very different directions for them. Sometimes things are okay and sometimes they aren't.</p><p>(You really don't need to have seen CM:SB to understand this story, but there are character notes at the beginning just in case. Also, you should go watch it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm glad you didn't know

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [我很高兴你不知道](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252047) by [justlikeit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikeit/pseuds/justlikeit)



> Sam Cooper (Played by Forest Whittaker): Team leader. Very zen but also kind of intense.  
> Beth Griffith (Played by Janeane Garofalo): Second in command. Cynical and snarky and very professional.  
> Jonothan 'Prophet' Cooper (Played by Michael Kelly): New SSA. Casual and friendly and very open about his past.  
> Gina LaSalle (Played by Beau Garrett): SSA. Smart and snarky and has something to prove.  
> Mick Rawson (Played by Matt Ryan): SSA and former sniper for British Special Forces. Flirty and witty but ambiguous about his past. 
> 
> In the spin-off the BAU team is less conventional than the BAU team in the original Criminal Minds, but they serve essentially the same purpose.
> 
> *Warnings for mentions of suicide and child abuse

Mick and John spend the first five years of their lives with their birth father. He’s not cruel, not really. But he is very, very sad. He drinks away his dead wife’s life insurance and ignores the sons who he tries not to blame for her death. Some nights he does blame them, though, and those nights are bad. On the boys’ fifth birthday, he puts a pistol in his mouth. John is the one who finds him, and he doesn’t let Mick see the body.

-

Mick and John spend the next year of their lives in an orphanage. It’s not bad, not really. It’s very crowded, and sometimes they only get one meal between the two of them because someone thinks the second brother is the first brother trying to get seconds. A month after the boys’ sixth birthday, Mick is adopted by the Rawson family. A month and two days after the boys’ sixth birthday, John is adopted by the Constantine family.

-

Mick loves his new family. His parents are kind and generous, and his sister is an angel. He wants to be angry that they didn’t adopt John, too, and for a while he is. But then he realizes that the Rawsons couldn’t afford another child and after John gets adopted by a family only 30 minutes away, they agree to weekly visits. He gets less angry after that.

-

John doesn’t know why the Constantines adopted him. Their daughter is 17 and almost ready to leave home. The mother is weak, timid. The father is stern, strict. During the day they all seem normal, happy, and he can almost pretend that they want him. At night his sister leaves and his mother cries and his father is _angry_. He wants to be angry that Mick left him, and for a while he is. But then he sees the scars on his own arms and is just relieved that Mick is safe every time he sees him. He gets less angry after that.

-

Mick doesn’t realize anything is wrong with the Constantines for three years. The boys are ten, and John shows Mick a _real_ magic trick. Mick doesn’t believe it’s real, not at first, and he laughs. But John stays serious and says he’s going to find their mother and their father – their _real_ mother and father – one day. Mick grabs John’s arm to tell him he’s crazy and John winces. Mick wants to scream when he sees the cigarettes burns – old and new – but John makes him promise not to tell or else they might send him far, far away from his brother.

-

John is twelve and his sister’s been gone for years, right after their ‘mother’ died, leaving him alone with their ‘father’. He’s angry all the time, except for when he’s with John. Today is their birthday, and Mick dares him to dye his hair blonde. He doesn’t have any dye, but he does have magic, so he spells it. Mick laughs until he cries and John laughs until his sides hurt. He relishes the happy sort of pain, not the kind from a fist or a boot. They laugh until Mick’s aunt comes crying and says the Rawsons are dead. (John later tells Mick that he can’t figure out how to get his hair to be brunette again. It always makes his twin laugh, and it reminds John that there is a reason to laugh. He will never, never tell Mick that he could’ve turned it back the day after he spelled it.) (Mick knows John could fix it and knows why he doesn’t. He loves his brother a little bit more for it.)

-

Mick and Jenna move in with their aunt. She doesn’t have a husband and she lives 30 minutes away from the Rawsons and an hour from John. It takes a long time for Mick to muster up the energy to care, too caught up in mourning and caring for Jenna, but by then John has done something to make an older boy drive him out every Friday and pick him up every Sunday. Mick never asks what John did or what blackmail he has on the boy, and John never tells him. But the car trips continue for two years, and then John gets a new driver. Two years after that an American named Chas becomes John’s driver, and he stays the weekend with him instead of leaving.

-

Age 16 and John is much better and conning and blackmail and manipulation and magic and trick than anybody his age should be. He stops blackmailing older students for rides to Mick’s after he saves a man’s wife and daughter from a poltergeist. He pretends that he doesn’t like Chas, or at least tries to, but it doesn’t last after Chas starts driving him to Mick’s and doesn’t leave him. If his dad is angrier on Sunday nights than usual, ranting about John abandoning his family and being ungrateful, then it’s worth it because he knows he has places and run and people who care.

-

When Mick sees John the week before their 18th birthday he’s terrified and worried and angry. John has a black eye and a split lip and his pupil are blown wide. Mick tells John he’s leaving, that he joined the military. John puffs on a cigarette and pulls out a tattoo gun. It takes an hour apiece and John keeps saying things in a language Mick doesn't know, but then the twins have twin symbols over their hearts. John says at least this way they’ll know each other is alive. Mick swears he can feel a heartbeat not his own through the ink.

-

When Mick joins the British Special Forces, he’s told he can’t tell anyone. He immediately tells John. John smiles and laughs and they go and get absolutely piss drunk. They show each other new scars and John shows Mick new tattoos. They all have meaning, symbols twined with magic and spells, just like the one they share over their chests. John doesn’t say and Mick doesn’t either, but sometimes the tattoo _hurts_ and that’s when they call each other. (One of them is usually in the hospital or at least should be when the call comes in.)

-

Mick joins the FBI and John makes fun of him for turning Yank and John meets them a year later and for a long time things are good. Mick catches human psychopaths and John handles the other side of things. Mick has a team of trained agents and the FBI watching his back and John has Chas and himself and somehow they’re both okay. But then they’re 32 and Mick’s tattoo _seizes_ and he wakes up crying and he calls John. John sounds dead, dying and there’s nothing in his voice when he says Astra is dead. By the time Mick gets leave, John’s already checked himself into an asylum. He refuses to see Mick. When Mick gets back to the states he finds Chas and finally gets the whole story and he kind of wants to cry again.

-

Six months later and serial killers are out in droves. Prophet jokes that there’s something in the water. Mick calls Chas and is told that the other side is going tits up too. But he doesn’t really believe until John checks out of the asylum and shows up on his doorstep with a cigarette between his teeth and a smile just a shade too stiff to be real on his lips. He knows – he _knows_ – that this means things are bad, really bad, but it’s _John_ and he’s at least halfway okay and god, did he miss him.

“Hel—“

Mick cuts him off with a hug tight enough that he can feel the ridges of his brother’s spine, the lines of his ribs. When John hugs him back, a little slowly at first but then tight and desperate, Mick thinks things are going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I just couldn't resist, especially after Episode 6 of Constantine. Let me know what you guys thought!


End file.
